1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a copying apparatus, and particularly to the improvement on the copying paper feeding mechanism of the copying apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As is well-known, in a desk-top-type copying apparatus, the paper-supply stream thereof is generally such that the apparatus has on one side of the body thereof a cassette-insertion opening and thereinside a paper-supply unit, and into the cassette-insertion opening is inserted a paper-supply cassette in the direction toward the opening from one appropriate side, and the paper-supply unit inside the body feeds each copying sheet in the same direction as the paper-supply cassette inserting direction. Accordingly, this system, since the paper-supply cassette inserting direction and the paper sheet feeding direction are the same, is advantageous in respect that just inserting a paper-supply cassette into the cassette-insertion opening results in the settling of the positional relation between the paper-supply unit and the leading end of a copying paper sheet, thus securing the feed of the copying paper sheet in a predetermined timing. This system, however, has the disadvantage that there must be an appropriate spacing on one side of the apparatus body for the insertion of the paper-supply cassette, therefore the body requires a large spacing for the installation thereof, and because of the need for handling the paper-supply cassette on the side face of the body, the efficiency of the machine operation is diminished.
For this reason, there has hitherto been proposed a construction (as disclosed in, for example, our Japanese Patent Application No. 81420/1983) which is such that a paper-supply cassette is inserted into the body from the front side (operator's side), and a copy image-printed paper is ejected from the body in a direction perpendicular to the direction in which the paper-supply cassette is inserted. That is, this construction, since it allows the loading/unloading operation of a paper-supply cassette to be carried out in front of the body, is advantageous in that if it requires no spacing on a side of the body, and thus a small spacing is enough for the installation of the apparatus body. This construction, however, has the drawback that, because a copying paper sheet is transported in a direction perpendicular to the direction in which a paper-supply cassette is inserted, there is present a play between the cassette-insertion opening and the paper-supply cassette, so that it is difficult to define the positional relation between the leading end of the copying paper inside the inserted paper-supply cassette and the paper-supply unit, causing the possibility of failure in feeding copying paper sheets, thus resulting in the difficulty in supplying copying sheets in a predetermined timing.